Bristle augers have been used many times for transferring material by sweeping action of the bristles against the housing, especially for powdered materials. Bristle augers have been used in other applications such as cleaning device for strainer screen housings where the auger bristles outer edge within the housing provide intimate contact with the housing that sweeps the screen clean as the auger rotates.
In this design a stepper motor having the ability maintain a repeatable RPM, drives a spiral brush mounted on the spiral driveshaft that will deliver given amount of product volume for each RPM, based on the pitch or space between the bristle spirals, with the bristles not being required to be in intimate contact with the auger housing that will be explained in more detail further on the explanation. The advantage of the bristle auger is, it requires less torque to rotate bristle auger through the close off point or pinch point of the flight within the mating cylinder housing. This becomes apparent when a product and especially a granular product is caught between the outer edge of the bristle and the cylinder housing. In this case a granular particle will be forced through the bristle and into the following flight eliminating the crushing of the particle that normally occur with a metal auger design, and all other current granular meter systems, thereby reducing the amount of power required to drive this auger. This is especially important when a number of stepper motors of the auger meters are running simultaneously from the same power supply.